


Hold Back The River

by toucanpie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Endgame, Trust Kink, neck biting, subtle praise kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:15:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25445971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/pseuds/toucanpie
Summary: The deli round the corner from Sam's old apartment has closed.It had lasted five years while the rest of the world fell apart. Now it's just a sign on the door and some wooden boarding.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 102
Collections: Obedience and Trust Flash Exchange





	Hold Back The River

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatScottishShipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatScottishShipper/gifts).



The deli round the corner from Sam's old apartment has closed. He only notices because the traffic's so bad he has to wait a full three or four minutes to cross the street.

It had lasted five years while the rest of the world fell apart. Now it's just a sign on the door and some wooden boarding.

\--

"Fuck," he says, swinging into his place through a doorframe that feels too small for him. 

The wings leaving him judging archways and low overheads too harshly, Eyeing up anything that could confine him or knock him sideways with one of those jarring hits that wrench his shoulders back.

"You're getting old, man," he tells himself.

Five years back, he would've taken it all on with a shrug, these days he feels like he had to be more careful with himself.

He kicks a few stray leaves off the doormat and drops his rucksack to the floor.

He's got a few hours before Bucky swings by and makes him talk like a human and not like Captain America (the new one, not _that_ one, yeah, cool man, nice to meet you too). A few hours before Bucky drops groceries on the counter and makes a point of cooking up something for them both, rolling tomatoes in his hands gentle like grenades.

A few hours where he sits carefully down on the couch and lets his grief creep up on him. Where he lets the tiredness roll in as someone on the TV tries to sell him something shiny and next door's kids laugh and squabble through the walls and the pigeons that live outside his window coo like they found their god and want to tell the whole world.

You gotta let yourself feel it, the counsellor in him tells himself. You gotta let yourself feel it. 

\--

But Sam, listen up now buddy, you can't hold onto it too hard.

\--

Nat is gone. Just gone. Never even got to say goodbye kind of gone and sometimes that hurts so much he doesn't know what to do with it.

So he sits there and lets it wash over him so he can process it. Process it and eventually let the stab of it fade, that's what Sam says. Sam the guy who's been through grief before, who knows this shit inside out and yet somehow is still letting it swallow him whole.

Sometimes he thinks if it could all have just been a little less he might be able to handle it better. If it hadn't been Stark's grey face on the battlefield followed by the news that Natasha was gone. If it hadn't been Steve stepping back through time then five minutes later handing over a shield that was ten times heavier on the arm than on the scales. If Parker hadn't been outed to the world by a jealous asshole, if Vision still glided through the walls of an untouched compound, if every walk down the street wasn't a reminder that he'd been gone, wiped, a little pile of dust, for five long years while the world had picked itself up and carried on.

\--

He could've talked to Steve about it, he reckons. They could've got real drunk and remembered Nat, done it properly. But Steve's off living a whole other life and his memories are an extra seventy years old now. Which leaves Barton and well, Sam's not cruel enough to dial that number. In a month or two, they'll talk, but in the meantime Clint needs to be with his kids and his wife, relearning all the good things about life.

Sam's still working on that for himself.

-

Barnes brings an old duffel bag over his shoulder every time he visits. In it is a selection of books that he sits and reads if Sam's being too much to be getting on with, but also a set of boxing gloves for them both if he's not. Those Sam kind of likes.

There's something good and cathartic about knowing he can punch Barnes full strength and the guy won't even flinch. He can pummel that chest and Bucky just lets him, just stands there and lets the blows rain down like it's no big deal.

He lets Sam go until sweat slides down his forehead and into his eyes, making them sting. 

Sam goes on his own too, with his own bag in his spare room and tape on his knuckles, goes til he loses a few pounds and has to tighten up the straps on the wings.

He goes until Bucky wraps an arm round him one day, holds him as he struggles, and tells him it's time to stop.

\--

"I know," Bucky always says, soft, as Sam concentrates on how the hell he's ever meant to catch up on his breathing.

"I miss them all too," Bucky says, as Sam works on putting away the series of losses he carries around in his chest every day.

"I got you," Bucky also says, his thumb rubbing behind Sam's ear, like a careful injection of calm that makes something inside Sam go heavy and soft.

\--

They'd had a thing between them once. 

One long evening in Wakanda the night before they both became ash.

\--

Over the course of a few drinks, he'd realised the sulking smartass from the back of the old Beatle in Berlin had been replaced with a guy who knew how to smile, how to rib Steve the same way Sam did.

Barnes' eyes had softened when Sam had thrown him a joke. He'd even crunched on ice-cubes, dragging the long human fingers of his right hand through condensation on the side of his drink.

When Steve had gone off to clasp hands with new people and make good all the final plans, they'd picked up right where they'd left off, pushing at each other to see where the boundaries lay.

He doesn't even remember who it was who stumbled into them and pushed Barnes right up against him. He just remembers Bucky's eyes watching him closely and the knowledge behind that gaze, the new and peaceful sturdiness of this guy who'd only a few months before been hunted by half the world.

"I know someone who'd lend us a room," Barnes had said. 

And Sam had looked at his mouth, looked at the soft curve of it, and thought well, what else were they meant to do on the eve of a battle to save the world?

"Why not?"

Barnes' smile had been gentle and the noisy room had narrowed right down to the two of them and the tight few inches between their chests.

Then someone had called their names. 

And though they'd ignored it for as long as they plausibly could - Barnes' smile only getting wider, his eyes only getting more crinkled at the edges, more amused - eventually they couldn't pretend they hadn't heard and had had to go where they were led.

\--

They don't ever talk about that. Maybe Bucky doesn't even remember it, Sam thinks. It'd make sense if that were the case - his own memories go a little fuzzy around halfway through the next day.

He remembers aliens pouring out of spaceships and their angry snapping faces busting through the gap in the Wakandan shield. Then Steve calling them into the wood, Wanda yelling out and then - nothing. He's a goner. Just tiny particles of Sam Wilson floating on the wind.

\--

"I don't wanna feel it," he tells Bucky, after Bucky's turned up (right on time, like he always is) and placed a cloth bag of food in Sam's arms.

"Okay, well let's do something else," Bucky says, carefully unpacking the bag once Sam's put it down on his counter.

Once, the strange domesticity of these Thursdays would've bothered Sam. James 'Bucky' Buchanan Barnes in his kitchen, making himself at home, cooking for Sam like he isn't fully grown human capable of doing it for himself.

But somehow it isn't like that.

"You want to feel something good instead?" Bucky says. "Like some meatballs and marinara?"

"I'm not feeling your meatballs," Sam says reflexively, almost against his own stubborn will, and Bucky smiles.

"There you go," Bucky says. "I see you smiling there, Cap."

\--

When Bucky says it, it feels real. 

Like when Bucky says "you got this" over the comms. " _We_ got this."

And Sam gets this tight, powerful feeling in his chest that no-one else knows anything about.

"Hey," Bucky will also say, pulling out his earpiece, shaking off his jacket after the fight. "Like that star on your chest."

And all of a sudden Sam'll remember it's his and he earned it and how good that makes him feel.

"Like the way you punch them bad guys," is all he ever manages to pant back. But Bucky will still tilt his head and grin.

\--

"What you thinking?" Bucky says.

He's the other end of the couch, their plates now empty and abandoned on the floor.

"Nothing," Sam says. 

Though he's thinking about a lot. About how when Bucky's around the clenched feeling in his stomach eases off.

"Hey, remember that time -" Bucky stops, shakes his head. "I don't know if it was real. Sometimes I think I made it up."

"Yeah?" Sam says. "Tell me about it, maybe it was real."

Maybe his pulse doesn't suddenly need to start beating so fast, too. That would be nice.

"Pretty sure it was real," Bucky says, catching his attention and not looking away. "You and me, getting along in a bar."

Sam swallows hard as the memory comes back. The press of the Wakandan heat, the careful edge to Bucky's movements, the gratefulness in his face when Sam and Steve had steered straight for him and sat down opposite his chair.

"If you ever want to revisit any of that -" Sam says slowly.

He'd go back in an instant. To that bar, to the way that Bucky listened - still listens - to him. To the way every moment had felt like a slide into something more personal, to how every word Bucky had said seemed like a suggestion of how he would touch - cautious but then sure, appreciative, fun. Gentle, but with a firmness underneath.

"Yeah," Bucky says, with a subtle rasp to his voice. "I'd like that."

\--

"Easy there," Sam tells himself, as Bucky pulls his shirt up over his head and drops it to the floor.

He's a lot of lean, scarred muscle that Sam has had hold him but has never seen up close before. It's a body that has fought for more than twice the years that Sam has been alive and there's a part of it that segues abruptly into metal, but neither of those things are bad.

Bucky's hands brush his own sides loosely as Sam looks his fill in the warm evening light. 

"You don't have to stop," Sam says.

Bucky huffs out a quiet laugh, his shoulders loosening. He touches the waistband of his pants, his gaze lowering, and then, like he's decided on something, unzips and takes off his pants, followed by his socks.

\--

There's nothing arrogant about him, but there ought to be. 

He's just the right mixture of easy and hard. He rolls across the bed with Sam like he's playing for keeps, like he wants Sam right where he has him and isn't planning on letting him go.

Some of it feels like a wrestling match. Their legs jostling between each other's, the way Bucky's teeth bite gently at his shoulder, his neck. 

Sam's clothes come off only when they take a break from rolling around and kissing like it really is five years in the past and there's no knowing what the next day's going to bring.

Bucky keeps his left arm out to the side, like he's afraid of bringing all that strength into the fray, so Sam touches it deliberately, running gentle fingers up the inside and looping his hand round the wrist.

Bucky watches him to do it with an expression Sam can only half read - there's some kind of unsureness going on, and he realises maybe it's just that nobody's ever touched it like that before. 

So it makes sense to lean over and kiss the inside of one cold wrist, and then the elbow.

Bucky shudders, his eyes pressing tightly closed and his metal fingers tightening in the sheets.

\--

That's the end of him keeping it to one side. He uses it to trace the arteries of Sam's neck, then the hollows of his throat. Then it maps a path down Sam's sternum and across his stomach to carefully wrap around his cock.

It's Sam's turn to shudder then and Bucky pauses, his head turning up. The look in his eyes is a question and Sam swallows down a heady prickle of nervousness and nods his head.

\--

A metal hand down there, gently gliding up and down through the wetness leaking out of his cock, means Bucky's other hand is free to explore Sam's neck again. It makes way for Bucky's mouth as things speed up, as Sam starts stretching up into his cool grip.

Bucky bites at the soft skin under his ear, his fingers tightening fractionally and Sam feels pleasure start to flood his body, pushing out everything else in his head and replacing it with the smells and sounds of the man alongside him.

Bucky kisses the spot he just bit at, his tongue coming out to lick at Sam's skin, rough and slow, and it's over. Sam's body clenches, shivers rushing from his toes and swallowing him up.


End file.
